This morning I got up at my usual time, since brain/cats/weather/cost of eggs in darkest Peru all continue to conspire against me ever being able to sleep late again, but it was for the best because we had to get ready to head out early anyway. I assembled yet another batch of lemon curd shortbread bars to bring along (because this year is all about the lemon bars), and we gathered up all the presents in a big box, and then we piled everything into the car and set off to spend the day in Campbell, with Richard’s family, for their traditional Christmas Eve gathering. There was a brief detour through Starbucks to get breakfast and then another one through a gas station because the ’empty’ light was flashing, so we got a bit later start than we’d intended, but somehow we managed to get there on time nonetheless.

It was a rather laid back day, in all. Both of Richard’s sisters were there, and his aunt called and everyone took turns passing the phone around to say hello. We ate lunch, and then spent the rest of the afternoon grazing through an assortment of fudge, peppermint bark, sugar cookies, and lemon bars. We opened all the goofy stocking stuffers, and it is a toss-up as to which was the best stocking stuffpresent this year – the pair of awesome slipper socks Richard’s cousin gave his mom, or the pickle bandaids. The slippers had big puffy cats on them, which not only made them a bit disconcerting to look at, but also thoroughly confused one of the dogs, who simply did not know how to deal with socks with big puffy things on them, while the bandaids were shaped just like tiny little pickles, and the box came complete with a small plastic, rather nervous looking pickle with huge eyes and an inexplicable hole through its head. Next up was the present exchange, and I got a wonderful little red mp3 player and this amazing dragon made of wrought iron and glass.

Richard’s mom is still recovering from surgery earlier this month, so we all left early, to try to give her time to rest before their dinner reservations later in the evening. Richard and I were initially kind of excited to be actually driving home on Christmas Eve during daylight hours, until we hit the freeway and remembered that just because *we* took the day off, didn’t mean that everyone else did, and oh by the way, rush hour traffic in the Bay area really, really sucks. So eventually we gave up, pulled off the freeway, and found somewhere to go for dinner. While this didn’t enable us to avoid all the traffic, we at least avoided most of it, which was the goal.

Tis the season for Holidailies!